Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (free ebooks for android .TXT) 📕

hit my forearm, somehow gouging into my armor and making me drop the sword. I put my shoulder behind the shield again and drove forward, slamming it into the mass of bodies over and over, trying to force them back, as hands grabbed at the edge of the shield and pulled… hard.

“Working on…it…” Yen cried back, and a flicker of light began to build from behind us, reflecting dimly off the dark, stained, and scored metal walls.

“Fall back,” Lydia snapped at me. “I’ve got this.”

“The… hell you… have!” I grunted, yanking hard on my shield with both hands, forcing back a scream as my right arm flared in pain.

Whatever had hit it earlier and stripped me of the sword had done serious damage, and the trail of dripping blood was inciting the undead into greater fury.

More and more bodies slammed into the pair of us as we backed away, and they seemed to have forgotten weapons, uncaring of damage as they reached with their rotting fingers. Flesh cascaded off their corpses as they grabbed and tore at us, frantic to get a solid grip to bring us down.

“I said…” Lydia growled at me, “… I’ve…” She started to glow a deep ominous red. “…got…” Her breath was coming out in faster and faster bursts as her arm sped up, the mace blurring as it smashed hands, legs, and skulls. “… this!” The last word erupted in a bellow as the light began to pour off her like a star going nova.

She screamed in rage and lunged forward, striking out again and again, her mace blurring, her shield no longer a defensive armament. Suddenly, it was spinning, lashing out and smashing targets into walls and the floor.

She took out a skeleton to her right with a mace strike to the side of the head, the skull disintegrating and showering those behind his flying teeth and shards, while her shield simultaneously moved so fast that it slammed into a rotting adventurer on her left hard enough to spin it into the wall, sending it to the floor in a clattering heap of broken bones and armor. A Naga, the flesh sloughing off it as it coiled its tail beneath itself, saw the opening and dove forward, only to meet Lydia’s foot.

She’d kicked out with an insane amount of force and booted the creature full in the chin as it lunged forward, sending it soaring upwards to hit the ceiling with shattering force. The lower jawbone turned into splinters as the rest of the skull flew away into the distance somewhere, ricocheting into the enemy.

Before the shamblers could recover from the sudden assault, she was driving through them, mace striking out over and over again, smashing one skeleton after another aside, her shield taking on all comers, even as she punched, kicked, and headbutted any that stood in her way.

For five seconds, all I could do was gape, seeing for the first time what it must be like for others when I used my Mana-Overdrive, as she became a full-on tornado of destruction.

Then her light began to dim, her breath began to come in short, fast gasps, and she staggered, nearly falling.

“Run… damn you!” she hissed at me, and I did.

I lunged up the dozen steps to reach her, grabbing her by the shoulder and spinning her around, then driving my shoulder into her gut and lifting, hoisting her fully armored form onto my shoulders and grunting as I felt something twang in my back.

I staggered, then bit down on my pain and thrust my left hand out, trusting to the straps on my shield to hold it in place as I fired a Fireball off, practically at point blank range into the reeling, uncoordinated undead.

Whatever was taking personal control had been too slow in changing to new minions when the last lot were killed, and I managed to fire it through a gap in the front lines into a particularly diseased looking minotaur three rows back.

The Fireball hit him in the middle of the chest and washed out, the blast wave stripping the remaining scraps of leather, flesh and straps that had covered it, and it staggered back before detonating in a growing rose bloom of flame.

I’d already turned, glad Oracle had managed to heal me all the way, and I triggered Mana-Overdrive again, conscious that I was doing myself damage, but having no choice in it, as I forced my muscles to not only carry me and my full Legion-armored weight, but to transport Lydia in her heavier Legion armor. I managed to run for a few dozen steps before I started to stagger again, sheer bloody-minded determination all that was keeping me going.

I pressed onward as fast as I could, while Oracle took up station next to Yen, preparing a second Fireball and hurling it over my shoulder into the mass of undead that seethed and rumbled behind me.

“Jax! Move it!” Oracle screamed in my mind. “They’re joining together to form a Behemoth!”

I got a confused welter of images through our link as I strained forward. Glimpses came through, of bones slamming together, leather and armor, weapons and gear flying apart, being discarded in the frantic rush of something that was determined we wouldn’t escape.

The bones were melding together, absorbing the trail of shattered minions and the oncoming intact undead alike. All were dragged into the forming colossus, and for the first time, I heard a sound from the undead, as something screamed out in rage and hunger from behind me, making my eardrums vibrate with the force of its hatred.

I staggered along, desperate to reach Yen, and I could see the strain that holding her spell was having on her. Five glowing spears, each at least six feet in length, wrapped in flames and glowing a roiling mix of yellow, red, white, and blue hovered above her head, quivering in the frantic need to be unleashed.

The sweat was running down her cheeks and she was shaking, her hands uplifted